I’m having an interesting etiquette issue. I’m a woman working in a male-dominated environment, and basically I don’t think like a girl. I wear flat shoes and greet people with a firm handshake and drink pints; that’s who I am and I don’t believe my gender should get in the way of how I want to live.

Other people have different ideas though, and although my boyfriend is the same age as me and works in the same industry, now we’re in our mid-twenties I’m starting to notice that social expectations of us are diverging.

A good illustration of this is the minefield of greetings – hugs or handshakes? Personally I think that people who know us both should probably treat us the same but its not really working that way. Close friends of either gender hug me in greeting; in contrast they mostly shake my partner by the hand. It does feel strange that we get treated so differently.